Stalag 17 (1953)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Stalag 17 (1953) – B. Wilder

Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 really has little resemblance to Hogan’s Heroes, the television show which followed it twelve years later.  Sure, they are both comedies set in POW camps during WWII (and both have a buffoonish Sgt. Schultz) but William Holden’s Sefton is about as far as you can get from Bob Crane’s Hogan.  For one thing, Sefton is not a sympathetic character – he’s more of a misanthropic grifter – and the other men do not look up to him (although he does run the still, organises gambling, and other illicit activities).  In fact, the plot of the movie focuses on the presence of a spy in the barracks, feeding information to the camp Commandant (played campily by Otto Preminger, a director in his own right), and everyone suspects Sefton.  There are a few distinctive characters in the barracks, principally Shapiro (Harvey Lembeck) and Animal (Robert Strauss) who clown around and Joey (Robinson Stone) who has been traumatised into a stupor.  As this suggests, the blend of humour and darkness can create an uneasy tension (wry cynicism is a Wilder trademark), although shenanigans and the team effort to defy the Nazis keeps bleakness at bay.  If you’ve only ever watched the TV series, you really should give the film a look.

  

Princess Mononoke (1997)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Princess Mononoke (1997) – H. Miyazaki

Miyazaki’s strengths lie in his fierce imagination and beautiful images aligned with environmental and humanistic themes.  His movies possess an internal logic all their own – and they might not always “make sense” outside of their own context.  But somehow the events still carry astonishing emotional weight, carried by the swelling sentimental music (by Joe Hisaishi) and allusions to the real world.  For example, much of the impact of Princess Mononoke lies in the idea that humans are destroying the environment, even though the story takes place in a fantasy version of feudal Japan where giant animal gods still roam the Earth despite the spread of humans.  We can be sad for the forest (whose health is symbolised by strange little sprite-like creatures) although we identify as human, understanding as Miyazaki’s heroes do, that we must learn to live together with nature.  But many humans in the film have not come to this realisation – and Miyazaki still asks us to empathise with the men and women of the ironworks who make the guns that are used to kill (forest gods as well as the pillaging samurai).  The central hero is Ashitaka who is infected by a boar god turned demon and must travel west to undo the curse – it is there that he finds himself in the middle of the battle between San and the wolves (who represent the forest) and Lady Eboshi and the ironworks (who represent human civilisation).  He tries to help them both – a complex position for a protagonist, demonstrating clearly that Miyazaki isn’t interested in making things easy for viewers (just as the issues are not easy in reality).  In the end, of course, it is the images, strange, gruesome, beautiful, violent, be they creatures, landscapes, or something more abstract, that will retain a grip on your memory, as they do in most Studio Ghibli films – and not the plot.  For what it is worth, I watched the Japanese version with subtitles (but not Neil Gaiman’s version).

Ad Astra (2019)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Ad Astra (2019) – J. Gray

Moody, meditative, even melancholy science fiction that stars Brad Pitt as an astronaut following in the footsteps of a famous father (Tommy Lee Jones in a cameo) and reflecting on the man and his (psychological) influence.  There’s more to it than that, of course, but not much more – this is minimalist filmmaking (from director James Gray) that aims to hypnotise viewers (and succeeds).  Pitt provides a restrained internal performance that seems most unbelievable when he awakens emotionally to the events around him. Basically, he is co-opted into the search for his father who disappeared decades ago but may now be threatening the Earth from somewhere out beyond Neptune.  Major McBride (Pitt) is torn between his admiration for his father and his sense of duty to the Space Force. As with Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1973), ruminations about relationships (this time, father-son relations) are dressed up with a matter-of-fact look at life in the future (commercial flights to a tourist trap moon, not far from a warzone over mining rights) and some dreamy visuals.  Plus a few action sequences to spruce things up. Perhaps the ending (apparently foisted on the director) doesn’t quite fit, given the trauma experienced by McBride (across a lifetime) but Pitt makes a noble effort with the lines.  Worth a look, if you’re on this wavelength.

Rumble Fish (1983)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Rumble Fish (1983) – F. F. Coppola

As a fully impressionistic picture that lets style dominate substance, Rumble Fish works.  It’s evocative of a time and place (where and when are not clear) and a social dynamic – the young tough kids (possibly from broken homes) who want to belong (to a gang) and want to follow a leader and the trouble they get into.  I was surprised at how Coppola went full art-house here but I suppose this is only four years after Apocalypse Now which certainly was a high watermark for stylish indulgence.  In this film, the B&W cinematography is beautiful, as are the players it records (Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Nicolas Cage, Mickey Rourke) and there are plenty of dramatic set-pieces, plenty of amazing shots. Tom Waits and Dennis Hopper drop by to be photographed (in character, their characters). Sure, the plot doesn’t quite add up – we don’t really get to understand why all the kids look up to Motorcycle Boy (Rourke) or why the adults (and he himself) think he is insane – but as a series of moments that create a sensual feeling (perhaps for Coppola, a nostalgic feeling), it did it for me.  Perhaps you have to be in the right mood, ready for the mood it creates, ready to follow Matt Dillon’s emptiness yearning to be filled, ready to be perplexed at his adoration of Mickey Rourke, wishing he did right by Diane Lane.  I just let it wash over me.